NC Part 15: January 2049 - October 2049

[Michael Sandy]

Suppose you have a mineral rich harsh enviroment moon orbitting a benign, mineral poor planet.  Or, I suppose, and enviromentally friendly moon with few minerals, orbiting a mineral rich but harsh planet.

Could you have one supply much of the food and services of the other?  Obviously, that would require some kind of reliable freighter service, so there would be costs to it.  And it would be best if the freighter in question could be loaded rapidly.

Maybe have the food supply for a month be as bulky as infrastructure?  It would only pay for really short hauls, I think.  Also, perhaps food could be stockpiled?

That way if you have periods where a colony has more manpower than needed, they can stock up on the food supplies part for when manpower is more tightly stretched?

I like the idea from a roleplaying perspective because it allows for more variation in colony types.  And in makes in-system shipping more important.  You could have stories of a freighter delivering emergency medical supplies somewhere.

Of course, this would add a lot more micromanagement to colonies.

[Michael Sandy]

I think that there are arguments both ways with regards to establishing more colonies.

As is many times the case, it is about whether dispersal is better in order to reduce losses from one point, or whether it is better to build up one site to the point it can defend itself.

A small colony, with population infrastructure, automated mines and a construction factory would slowly grow the capacity of a colony to expand.  If Thebes were eliminated, colonization efforts could be diverted there, because the infrastructure was already there.

But many such diversions and it will take longer to build up Thebes to the point that it can build shipyards and missile bases and fighter hangars.

I can't find the galactic map that was posted a while back, but as I understand it, Mycenae and Thebes are the most critical nodes for the Commonwealth.  Until some loops are discovered, Thebes _has_ to be defended because it is so crucial just for its location.

[kdstubbs]

Stev e,
        If someone really wanted to force the jump gate, would they really be able to refuse transit?  If someone off loads troops via assault shuttle, takes over the gate, then what happens?  In other words, can you capture and retain a jump gate?  Could make for some fun.

        Colonization pipeline and a infrastructure and transportation pipeline to Thebes is critical to optimize your efforts.  But your doing well as it is.

Kevin  

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Steve,
        If someone really wanted to force the jump gate, would they really be able to refuse transit?  If someone off loads troops via assault shuttle, takes over the gate, then what happens?  In other words, can you capture and retain a jump gate?  Could make for some fun.Kevin  

I am assuming the gate would require a security code in order to activate. I suppose we could have a Hacking Team (with perhaps a more sci-fi name) that could attempt to break the code on enemy jump gates. It might also be possible for Espionage Teams (when I get to that) to learn the access codes for some jump gates of other races.

Steve

[Michael Sandy]

Heh.  Do you _really_ want to trust your ships to the corrupted software of an enemy installation?  One hidden software hiccup in the Jump Gates control and the ships that jump through could instead be squished into grav-salad.

[MWadwell]

You are neglecting an important factor in converting the manned mines to automated.  It costs 1500 production to do it.  1/3 of a shipyard, right there.

True - I  had forgotten that.


Rather than going back and forth over personal preferences, let's have a look at what the Commonwealth needs, and what it wants.

But first, let's define what a need is, and what a want is.....

A need is something that has to be addressed immediately. The need will not go away on it's own, and is having a detrimental effect on more than one industry.

A want is something that may resolve itself in time (i.e. through growth or something being introduced or being made redundant).

O.K. Now, let's have a look at what the Commonwealth needs and what it wants.

We'll look at a couple of things: mineral production, population, shipyard and factory usage, and others.

First, Mineral production[/u]:

As in September 2048, the Commonwealth is mining at Earth, Thebes and Toronto. Between the 3 locations, they are producing:
Duranium: 12505 t/year (although 11250 t comes from earth - which is about to run out....)
Neutronium: 1254 t/year
Corbomite: 1732 t/year
Tritanium: 303 t/year
Boronide: 121 t/year
Mercassium: 0 t/year
Vendarite: 0 t/year
Sorium: 317 t/year
Uridium: 317 t/year
Corundium: 0 t/year
Gallicite: 1214 t/year

Next, Population[/u].
Earth has approx 790M people, with 22M of this free. It's annual growth rate is approx 2.3% (assuming that there is sufficient free infrastructure).
Thebes has approx 3.8M people, with 850K of this free. It's annual growth rate is approx 10% (There's enough free infrastructure for 800K).

Shipyard usage[/u]
The Commonwealth has 12 shipyards. Of which (assuming a 3 year overhaul cycle) 27% of the shipyards will be occupied doing the overhauls.

In addition, the overhauls will use the following materials:
Duranium: 680 t/year
Neutronium: 30 t/year
Corbomite: 30 t/year
Tritanium: 50 t/year
Boronide: 50 t/year
Mercassium: 155 t/year
Vendarite: 0 t/year
Sorium: 30 t/year
Uridium: 350 t/year
Corundium: 40 t/year
Gallicite: 250 t/year

If we take the overhaul usage away from the minerals gained through mining, we get:
Duranium: 575  t/year (ignoring the production from earth)
Neutronium: 1224 t/year
Corbomite: 1702 t/year
Tritanium: 253 t/year
Boronide: 71 t/year
Mercassium: -155 t/year
Vendarite: 0 t/year
Sorium: 287 t/year
Uridium: -33 t/year
Corundium: -40 t/year
Gallicite: 1164 t/year

From looking at the list above, it is obvious that one of the needs is more mining facilites..... Specifically in Duranium, Mercassium, Uridium and Corundium.

Now, let's assume that the shipyards are running at 50% usage (e.g. 6 out of 12 shipyards) in building new ships.
Furthermore, let's assume that it is evenly split into building 3 Themistocles II freighters and 3 Artemis II colony ships. This will produce 3 freighters, and 1.5 colony ships per year.

This will require:
Duranium: 1715 t/year
Neutronium: 84 t/year
Corbomite: 30 t/year
Tritanium: 0 t/year
Boronide: 0 t/year
Mercassium: 1185 t/year
Vendarite: 0 t/year
Sorium: 30 t/year
Uridium: 0 t/year
Corundium: 0 t/year
Gallicite: 810 t/year

If we take the overhaul/shipbuilding usage away from the minerals gained through mining, we get:
Duranium: -1140  t/year (ignoring the production from earth)
Neutronium: 1140 t/year
Corbomite: 1672 t/year
Tritanium: 253 t/year
Boronide: 71 t/year
Mercassium: -1340 t/year
Vendarite: 0 t/year
Sorium: 257 t/year
Uridium: -33 t/year
Corundium: -40 t/year
Gallicite: 354 t/year


Factory usage[/u]
Earth has 489 factories, which produce 6846 BP.
Thebes has 22 factories, which produce 370 BP.

As it works out that a ton of material is needed for each BP, this means that with the factories working at 100%, that 7216 tons of material needed - of which over 50% of which is Duranium.

This means that the yearly production of Duranium is actually:
Duranium: -4750  t/year (ignoring the production from earth) (And I should point out, that this is assuming that only 50% of the items manufactured are made from Duranium. If 100% of the item is made from Duranium, then this figure is on the low side......)

As I have previously stated, one of the needs is more mining facilites....

Others[/u]
I don't know how much miscellaneous infrastructure is needed - things such: as raw materials for supply points/missiles/other consumables; additional ground forces; etc.



So, looking at the above figures, it is apparent that main overriding need is for automated/manned mines.

At present, the best place for manned mines is Thebes (as it has Duranium with an accessibilty of "0.8"). Which then means that there is a need for free personel on Thebes.

Having a look at the rate of change on Thebes, you can see that each convoy takes out either 200/250K of people. This would translate into approx 140/175 K free people. The same convoy is taking out 9 automated/manned mines. As each convoy has a round trip of approximately 2 months, this gives the industry on Earth to convert approx 7.5 manned mines to automated mines. Which means that an average of 1.5 manned mines are shipped out each turn.

That means that out of the 200/250K colonists, (discounting service population and people to man the mines) the free colonist population is increased by only 65/100K per convoy. Add to this the population growth (of 380K /year) and we get a yearly increase of 770/980K /year.


Now let's remember that to use the shipyards, you'd need a free population of 2M. At the current rate of population increase, this will occur in about 1.5 years.....

And that is production at Thebes.  Production at Thebes has to be weighted a bit more strongly.  Automating the mines costs more than building 10 more construction factories.

Converting manned mines to automated ones has got to be a very temporary strategy, just long enough to get everything at Thebes fully employed.  After that, there is no point towards spending more Theban production converting factories.

Looking over the figures above, I now agree with you - automating the manned mines is probably wasteful.

However, the huge shortage in raw materials means that the industry would be better service making manned mines, rather than a shipyard.....

You are correct in how we disagree about the timing of the demand for shipyards.  You are correct that the Commonwealth can keep producing ships for a long time as the ratio of refit time to shipbuilding increases.  However, increasing economic expansion requires an increase in ship building rates.

True - however, I believe that I've shown above that the major factor in ship construction is NOT available shipyard space, but raw materials to build the ships in the first place.

If you can build enough colony ships, you can transport manned mines and more construction factories.

Agreed - but FIRST you need to have the raw materials - which at the moment, the Commonwealth doesn't have......

There are a few other considerations:
1)  A shipyard in Thebes is secure from spies.  A completely new class of warship could be developed there.  Like, say, Carriers.

2)  A shipyard in Thebes more secure from raids, sabotage etc...

3)  Spies will not have an accurate count of Commonwealth hulls.

4)  A shipyard on Thebes is slightly more efficient for refiting survey ships.  Loses 2 fewer useful months per 3 years.

While these are valid points, the above are more wants rather than needs.

For example, for the short term, the Commonwealth is going to be concentrating on building freighters and colony ships - who cares about spies?

And run the trends:
2044, Colonization of Thebes begins.  5 years later, 5 million.  If you extrapolate, you should have a lot more than 10 million on Thebes in 5 more years, because a lot of time was lost ramping up freighter and colony ship numbers.  I figure that in 5 years, you would have a few more mines, but a _lot_ more construction factories.

But that just exagerates the problem, as at the moment, the biggest problem is a shortage of raw materials - NOT of factories.

But in 5 more years, there will be fewer new colony ships and freighters coming on line, not more, because of refit issues.

At that point, even producing a new shipyard every 3 years at Thebes it would be hard to increase the new construction speed.

With an overhaul every 3 years, every new ship consumes 6.6% of it's construction cost every year.

What this means, is that with 9 (73% of 12) shipyards at full production, the shipyards need to increase approximately 0.6 extra shipyards per year.

So you are correct in that in 5 years time there may be a problem (as only 0.33 shipyards are built per year - well below the required 0.6) - but I'll just point out one major assumption - that is that in the 5 years the shipyards are running at full production. As can be seen (from the raw material production), that's a pretty big assumption.....

[Michael Sandy]

Hmmm.  Good analysis I would dispute that the Commonwealth _needs_ to keep all of its factories running.

Running factories to convert mines costs 150 Duranium per mine.  It takes a while for an automated mine to earn that back.  10 years per mine.

Colony ship is a better payoff, I think, because each 2.5? 3? round trips transports enough colonists to support another manned mine.  A bit over 2 months per round trip, a colony ship allows another manned mine every 6 months or so.  2 a year.  Payoff in about 4 years.  Figure that the added population growth in that time takes care of the additional population required for food and services.  Of course, it takes longer to build a colony ship, so that is weighting against it in terms of time.

If being short of Duranium means the Commonwealth can't build a colony ship, it has made the wrong decision.  So reluctantly I agree, since it would take many years for a new shipyard to produce enough colony ships to pay for the resources involved, by the logic I described, if it costs a chance to build a colony ship it has to be delayed.

The Commonwealth is having a resource crash, and needs to conserve what it can and preserve its ability to grow.

Thank you for running the numbers on the number of shipyards required to keep up with refits, and how many more will be needed.

I think that the shipyards _have_ to be running at full blast because they address the resource crash faster than anything else.  Because the manned mines are already built.

Once the Jump gate line to Thebes is built, colony ships can be built with a much higher engine:cryotank ratio.  That would reduce the build time and the Mercassium cost a bit.

As for the raw materials, the Commonwealth has enough to keep the ship building going, with the Mercassium from the Gitanyow, the stockpile of Duranium, and Gallicite isn't a problem anymore.  So shipping a bunch of automated mines for a quick lunch in Sicyon, with availability 1 in 7? elements on an asteroid there would be a good thing.

The Commonwealth has more freighters than are useful just for shipping to Thebes.  However, a longer haul could be profitable, if they can ship mines to places with higher mineral availability.

Something else your numbers showed:
Ship building has advantages because it requires a lot of different minerals.  A mine producing gallicite, mercassium, and duranium could produce as many as 42 tons a year towards making another ship, but only 14 tons a year towards producing another mine.  That means building ships in order to expand the economy can require fewer mines to replace the resources involved than build more mines would.

Duranium looks like it will be The long term limiter on growth.  Chances are, if you have enough Duranium for everything you will have enough of everything else.  That makes pure Duranium consumption potentially poison for growth.

[Michael Sandy]

Another way to look at it:

Compare the effect on growth by basically shutting down Earth Industry, and using the Duranium stockpile as long as possible for ship building to converting factories.

It won't take that many more mines before the Duranium situation is sufficient to maintain ship building.  The Commonwealth has 2 solid years of Mercassium, courtesy of trade with the Gitanyow, and has that time to get Mercassium into production.

A new colonization strategy has presented itself for starting a colony:
Build small troop transports to carry Engineers.  Instead of sending a colony ship, a huge amount of bulky infrastructure and construction factories, send automated mines, Engineers, and a bunch of supply for the initial colony.  Once infrastructure has been built, send in colonists, construction factories and manned mines.

Heh, reminds me of the computer game, Civilization II.  You could never have too many Engineer units.

You provide numbers showing that there is no way the Commonwealth can hope to supply the Duranium needs of its factories running full blast.  How much _less_ can it hope to keep them running full blast by putting them on projects that consume pure Duranium, as distinct from 50% Duranium?

[MWadwell]

Hmmm.  Good analysis I would dispute that the Commonwealth _needs_ to keep all of its factories running.

I agree. I think that the Commonwealth needs to re-evaluate it's priorities, and then only do the essential.

Running factories to convert mines costs 150 Duranium per mine.  It takes a while for an automated mine to earn that back.  10 years per mine.

Colony ship is a better payoff, I think, because each 2.5? 3? round trips transports enough colonists to support another manned mine.  A bit over 2 months per round trip, a colony ship allows another manned mine every 6 months or so.  2 a year.  Payoff in about 4 years.  Figure that the added population growth in that time takes care of the additional population required for food and services.  Of course, it takes longer to build a colony ship, so that is weighting against it in terms of time.

Good point! Let's do the maths to see what is better, to automate a manned mine, or to ship out colonists. (The shipping of the manned/automated mine won't be calculates, as it should be the same.)

With a colony the size of Thebes, approx 30% of the new colonists are going to service population, plus an extra 5% to food production - leaving 65% available.

Each colony ship can do 6 convoys/year, and carries 50 000 colonists - for a total of 300 000 colonists/year. Multiply this by 65% and we get 195K free population/year - or enough to man 4 mines/factories.

The flip side of this, is that a colony ship costs almost 870 BP (and takes almost 870 tons of materials) to build, verse only 150 to automate a manned mine.

So the payoff for an automated mine is in 10 years (150/15), and for the colony ship it is 14.5 years (870/(4 x 15)).

Which is surprising - automating a manned mine is actually better value than shipping colonists! Can you just double check my maths for me - as I am very surprised by this.

Looking at the math, the colony ship is penalised a little, as the assumption is that a mine is only mining a single type of metal (whereas in reality a single mine can be producing multiple types, and so increasing it's efficiency).

If being short of Duranium means the Commonwealth can't build a colony ship, it has made the wrong decision.  So reluctantly I agree, since it would take many years for a new shipyard to produce enough colony ships to pay for the resources involved, by the logic I described, if it costs a chance to build a colony ship it has to be delayed.

The Commonwealth is having a resource crash, and needs to conserve what it can and preserve its ability to grow.

Agreed. But I think that we need to consider exactly what is the best method to grow. I know that I was surprised by the results (above), that showed that a colony ship can be more inefficient that automating a mine......

Thank you for running the numbers on the number of shipyards required to keep up with refits, and how many more will be needed.

I think that the shipyards _have_ to be running at full blast because they address the resource crash faster than anything else.  Because the manned mines are already built.

I'm of two minds on this. The ships are more of a long-term growth need, whereas automated mines are a short term need.

Personally, I think that the shipyards should be reasonably busy now, with increasing usage when the material shortage subsides.

Once the Jump gate line to Thebes is built, colony ships can be built with a much higher engine:cryotank ratio.  That would reduce the build time and the Mercassium cost a bit.

I think someone needs to do an analysis as to what is the best colonist:ship speed ratio.

With the jump gates becoming operational in 2 years, the best way of shipping colonists now might not be the best way in the future.

As for the raw materials, the Commonwealth has enough to keep the ship building going, with the Mercassium from the Gitanyow, the stockpile of Duranium, and Gallicite isn't a problem anymore.  So shipping a bunch of automated mines for a quick lunch in Sicyon, with availability 1 in 7? elements on an asteroid there would be a good thing.

The Commonwealth has more freighters than are useful just for shipping to Thebes.  However, a longer haul could be profitable, if they can ship mines to places with higher mineral availability.

Agreed.

Something else your numbers showed:
Ship building has advantages because it requires a lot of different minerals.  A mine producing gallicite, mercassium, and duranium could produce as many as 42 tons a year towards making another ship, but only 14 tons a year towards producing another mine.  That means building ships in order to expand the economy can require fewer mines to replace the resources involved than build more mines would.

Agreed. As I stated above, the years to recoup the raw materials for a colony ship is 14.5 years, but that is assuming only a single material is gathered per mine.

If 2 materials are gathered, then the time is halved, if 3 are gathered, the time is one third, etc.

Duranium looks like it will be The long term limiter on growth.  Chances are, if you have enough Duranium for everything you will have enough of everything else.  That makes pure Duranium consumption potentially poison for growth.

Agreed.

And this is where the Commonwealth is going to be held back by the other nations - as it is the only nation producing substantial amounts of raw materials, the other nations are going to be putting pressure on the Commonwealth to hand over raw materials to support their own economy - and this is only going to get worse with the Duranium running out on Earth.

For example, the Islamic Alliance has very little duranium and a small industry. The only way it can grow is to get raw materials, but it first needs to grow to get the raw materials in the first place. And so it is in a lose-lose situation - and has nothing to lose by threatening the Commonwealth to supply raw materials......

[Michael Sandy]

I stared at your comparison between mines and colony ships for a while before I caught the error.

The colony ship doesn't just shift enough population for 4 mines a year and _stop_.

So, perhaps we need an actual calendar calculation:
Start with Month 0, where both the conversion is started, and the colony ship is started.
Month 2, the converted mine starts mining.
Month 24?  The colony ship starts shipping.
Month 27, an additional manned mine is in operation
Month 30 ""
Month 84 a total of 60 new manned mines are in operation.

So compare the ratio of mined minerals over a 84 month period or so.
82 mine/months for the automated mine.
60 + 57 + .... + 9 + 6 + 3 = 630 mine months
over 114 months, it would be 1395 mine months

Note, this neglects the resource cost for supporting the colony ship.

[Michael Sandy]

I think that when comparing Colony Ships to converting mines, one should look at the number of mines needed to replace the resources consumed.  Because that helps calculate the long term sustainability and profitability of a particular course of action.

And that 150 Duranium is a big chunk.

In the next decade, as technology improves, colony ships will get faster and with the Jump Gates, become more efficient in terms of build cost and time.

However, the heyday of the colony ship as the best single investment runs out when the manned mines of Earth are completely shipped.  It would take 25 million population to man 500 manned mines, or a population on Thebes in excess of 40 million.  Of course, those colony ships still pay off in supplying the population for Construction factories and Supply Factories.

[MWadwell]

I stared at your comparison between mines and colony ships for a while before I caught the error.

The colony ship doesn't just shift enough population for 4 mines a year and _stop_.

Ahhh - that's it. I knew that the results "felt" wrong.....

So, perhaps we need an actual calendar calculation:
Start with Month 0, where both the conversion is started, and the colony ship is started.
Month 2, the converted mine starts mining.
Month 24?  The colony ship starts shipping.
Month 27, an additional manned mine is in operation
Month 30 ""
Month 84 a total of 60 new manned mines are in operation.

So compare the ratio of mined minerals over a 84 month period or so.
82 mine/months for the automated mine.
60 + 57 + .... + 9 + 6 + 3 = 630 mine months
over 114 months, it would be 1395 mine months

Note, this neglects the resource cost for supporting the colony ship.

Let's have a look at the # of working mines, for a set mineral outlay.

Ignoring shipyard usage, supply and  overhaul requirements, it costs nearly 900 tons to construct a colony ship. For the sake of the comparison, let's say that the 900 tons is entirely Duranium (so that we don't have to worry about mine output of different minerals, or of exchange rations between different mineral types). Let's also assume that we have a Duranium availability of "1", and that it takes zero time to convert a manned mine to an automated mine.

Month 0
* 6 mines automated - each producing 14 tons of Duranium (or 84t/year)
* Colony ship started - construction time: 2 years


Month 22
* 154 t of Duranium mined - enough to convert another mine (total # = 7). Now producing 98t/year.

Month 24
* Colony ship launched. Each trip takes 2 months, carrying 50K population (of which 35K are "free" population).

Month 26
* First round trip completed - 0 mines and 35K free population.

Month 28
* Second Round trip - 1 mine plus 20K free population

Month 30
* Third Round trip - 2 mines plus 5K free population

Month 32
* Fourth Round trip - 2 mines plus 40K free population

Month 34
* Fifth Round trip - 3 mines plus 25K free population

Month 36
* Sixth Round trip - 4 mines plus 10K free population

Month 38
* Seventh Round trip - 4 mines plus 45K free population

Month 40
* 150 t of Duranium mined - enough to convert another mine (total # = 8 ). Now producing 112t/year.
* Eighth Round trip - 5 mines plus 30K free population

Month 42
* Ninth Round trip - 6 mines plus 15K free population

Month 44
* Tenth Round trip - 7 mines plus 0K free population

Month 46
* Eleventh Round trip - 7 mines plus 35K free population

Month 48
* Twelveth Round trip - 8 mines plus 20K free population


Summary:
End of Year 2:
* Automating mines:
7 mines automated, 20 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colonisation:
0 colonists transported, 0 mines, 0 tons of stockpiled duranium

End of Year 3:
* Automating mines:
7 mines automated, 120 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colonisation:
210 colonists transported, 4 mines, 28 tons of stockpiled duranium

End of Year 4:
* Automating mines:
8 mines automated, 75 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colonisation:
420 colonists transported, 8 mines, 114 tons of stockpiled duranium

Constinuing this on, we get:

End of Year 5:
* Automating mines:
9 mines automated, 42 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colonisation:
630 colonists transported, 12 mines, 259 tons of stockpiled duranium

End of Year 6:
* Automating mines:
10 mines automated, 18 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colonisation:
840 colonists transported, 16 mines, 464 tons of stockpiled duranium


As can be seen, despite the fact that the automated mines are re-investing the mined duranium (while the colonisation effort is stockpiling it), at 4 years the # of mines are the same. After 4 years though, the colonisation effort is by far the most cost effective.....

[Michael Sandy]

Even with the 5 months the Colony ship has to spend refitting after 3 years, it still pays better.

However, to be fair, I also neglected the Supply cost of the colony ship.  But then, we also neglected the increase population growth as a result of shipping colonists.

It is tricky, trying to determine what factors you can leave out in comparing two courses of action.

Looking at the Commonwealth's resource crisis, everything but the Duranium part can be dealt with by shipping automated mines to Platea.  So when comparing how the colony ship strategy compares with the converting mine strategy with getting the Duranium budget positive, the colony ship strategy comes out _way_ ahead.

There is another course of action for staving off the Duranium crisis:
Scrap the fighter bases, a large number of construction factories, and some of the ordnance factories.

Running the numbers on fighter design, I just don't see them being effective with two racks.  A size 2 missile just isn't going to be very effective.  And getting to three racks requires 40,000 research points.  A huge number that will take some time.  Sufficient time that investing the Duranium component of the Fighter Bases would likely pay off in an increase in total production sufficient to build them later.

And on Thebes.

[MWadwell]

Even with the 5 months the Colony ship has to spend refitting after 3 years, it still pays better.

However, to be fair, I also neglected the Supply cost of the colony ship.  But then, we also neglected the increase population growth as a result of shipping colonists.

Well, the supply cost is relatively easy to calculate - as it costs 5% of the ships build cost for 0 to 6 months, and then increases 5% for every 6 months after that. And every supply point is a ton of duranium.

So for a 3 year period, the average yearly maintenance is 17.5%. Similarly the overhaul cost (in metals) is 20% of the ships construction cost. Adding it all together, we get the "running cost" of a ship (over a 3 year period) of 72.5% of the ships building cost (or, if a ship "costs" 870 tons of duranium to build, maintenace/overhauls "costs" another 630 tons of duranium over 3 years).

Now, the interesting thing is, that when you take the running costs of the ship into consideration, the net effect is that the mines are producing negative amounts of Duranium.

(Let's double check this. Over 3 years, the monthly maintenace plus the overhaul cost amounts to 630 tons of duranium. Previously, I have stated that in 3 years of colonisation, it results in 259 tons of stockpiled duranium.)

An example, is that in the first 2 months, the ship requires 7.25 tons of duranium for supply - but the mines only produce 2.3 tons of duranium. In fact, going over the amount of duranium produced, over a 3 year lifetime of the colony ship, it NEVER results in a positive amount of duranium mined......

And this is taking the population growth into consideration......

It is tricky, trying to determine what factors you can leave out in comparing two courses of action.

Looking at the Commonwealth's resource crisis, everything but the Duranium part can be dealt with by shipping automated mines to Platea.  So when comparing how the colony ship strategy compares with the converting mine strategy with getting the Duranium budget positive, the colony ship strategy comes out _way_ ahead.

Well, surprisingly, a colony ship actually has a negative effect on the amount of duranium produced.....

Comments?

[MWadwell]

Well, surprisingly, a colony ship actually has a negative effect on the amount of duranium produced.....

Comments?

O.K. I had a longer look at this, and worked out that over the mid-term, the colony ship method turns profitable, and in the long run is a LOT better......

Assumptions:
1) 10% growth of population (it would actually be more when the colony is smaller - but hey, if you don't like the assumption, run the simulation yourself..... )
2) Population growth is 10% (I know it would be higher for the colony when it is just starting out), and the population growth occurs at the end of every year.
3) Food plus Service Population = 30% of all colonists transfered (when the colony is smaller, this would be less than 30%.)
4) That the colony ship is overhauled every 3 years.

O.K. then, here is a summary of the results:

End of Year 1:
* automated mine:
6 mines, 84 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
0K colonists, 0 mines, 0 stockpiled duranium (colony ship under construction)

End of Year 2:
* automated mine:
7 mines, 20 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
0K colonists, 0 mines, 0 stockpiled duranium (colony ship just launched)

End of Year 3:
* automated mine:
7 mines, 118 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
210K colonists, 4 mines, -38 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 4:
* automated mine:
8 mines, 76 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
441K colonists, 8 mines, -96 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 5:
* automated mine:
9 mines, 42 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
695K colonists, 13 mines, -172 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 6:
* automated mine:
10 mines, 18 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
870K colonists, 17 mines, -150 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 7:
* automated mine:
11 mines, 8 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
1166K colonists, 23 mines, 34 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 8:
* automated mine:
12 mines, 12 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
1493K colonists, 29 mines, 226 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 9:
* automated mine:
13 mines, 32 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
1747K colonists, 34 mines, 395 stockpiled duranium

End of Year 10:
* automated mine:
14 mines, 68 tons of stockpiled duranium
* Colony ship:
2132K colonists, 42 mines, 895 stockpiled duranium


Interesting points:
* The colony ship doesn't "break even" (i.e. the stockpiled duranium is above 0) until just before the end of year 7.
* That the largest "debt" by the colony ship is -241 tons, but by halfway through year 6 (after the ship has had it's first overhaul) the "monthly production minus usage" is positive.
* By the end of year 4, the number of mines in operation by the colony ship method is the same as to the automated mine method. Afterwards, the number of mines in usage by the colony ship method is much greater.